Chapter 17

IN WHICH TOMMY SOLVES THE WOMAN PROBLEM

Pity made Elspeth want to like the Painted Lady's child now, but her own
rules of life were all from a book never opened by Grizel, who made her
religion for herself and thought God a swear; she also despised Elspeth
for being so dependent on Tommy, and Elspeth knew it. The two great
subjects being barred thus, it was not likely that either girl, despite
some attempts on Elspeth's part, should find out the best that was in
the other, without which friendship has no meaning, and they would have
gone different ways had not Tommy given an arm to each. He, indeed, had
as little in common with Grizel, for most conspicuous of his traits was
the faculty of stepping into other people's shoes and remaining there
until he became someone else; his individuality consisted in having
none, while she could only be herself and was without tolerance for
those who were different; he had at no time in his life the least desire
to make other persons like himself, but if they were not like Grizel she
rocked her arms and cried, "Why, why, why?" which is the mark of the
"womanly" woman. But his tendency to be anyone he was interested in
implied enormous sympathy (for the time being), and though Grizel
spurned his overtures, this only fired his pride of conquest. We can all
get whatever we want if we are quite determined to have it (though it be
a king's daughter), and in the end Tommy vanquished Grizel. How? By
offering to let her come into Aaron's house and wash it and dust it and
ca'm it, "just as if you were our mother," an invitation she could not
resist. To you this may seem an easy way, but consider the penetration
he showed in thinking of it. It came to him one day when he saw her lift
the smith's baby out of the gutter, and hug it with a passionate delight
in babies.

"She's so awid to do it," he said basely to Elspeth, "that we needna let
on how much we want it done." And he also mentioned her eagerness to
Aaron as a reason why she should be allowed to do it for nothing.

For Aaron to hold out against her admittance would have been to defraud
himself, for she transformed his house. When she saw the brass lining of
the jelly-pan discolored, and that the stockings hanging from the string
beneath the mantelpiece had given way where the wearers were hardest on
them; when she found dripping adhering to a cold frying-pan instead of
in a "pig," and the pitcher leaking and the carrot-grater stopped--when
these and similar discoveries were made by Grizel, was it a squeal of
horror she gave that such things should be, or a cry of rapture because
to her had fallen the task of setting them right?

"She just made a jump